Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

time as well as the same space.« I’m sure she knew that some essential concepts eluded me, and so she tried to explain further, picking up what appeared to be a couple of small ceramic coasters from the table. »Say each of these represent our respective worlds. Now say they are trying to be on the same place at the table at the same time.«
    »One on top of the other,« I said.
    She shook her head. »Both touching the table in the same place.«
    »How?« Again, she shook her head. »It’s not possible?«
    »No.«
    »What caused it?« I asked.
    »Evidence of longtime disturbances in the field between. The initial breach between worlds, perhaps. The presence in the field of Jake, the person you’ve been seeing. Your ghost. He, and the woman he was with, were members of the second transitory group, following the first, thirty years ago. It’s unclear why he continues to exist, or if his presence was the precipitory factor.«
    She held her hands out in front of her, as if she herself didn’t understand what she knew. »He’s not a ghost?« I asked.
    »He is,« she said, »but he isn’t dead.«
    Yellow lights flashed through the living room drapes, and for an instant I thought some kind of landing party was going to come crashing through the door and ask to see our passports. Nothing happened; I heard more beeping, somewhere in the distance, and the sound of breaking glass. I picked up one of the coasters and looked at it. At first I’d thought it was ceramic; then, when I touched it, realized it was something else. »What’ll happen when both coasters touch the table at the same time?«
    »Unforeseeable.«
    »Will we still be here?«
    »Something will,« she said. »A third world, perhaps.«
    »Will we be in it?«
    »Unknowable.«
    There wasn’t much she had to add, and even little I could think of to ask. Maybe I was still under the influence of Pi; if so, I wasn’t sure if this was a trip I wanted to come back from. All of a sudden I began to have a very hard time breathing. »You got a back yard?« I asked. »I need some fresh air.«
    »There’s interior recirculation.«
    »Outside air,« I said. »Please?«
    »Of course,« Eulie said, standing. She walked down the hall towards what I gathered to be her bedroom, disappearing for a minute or two. While she was gone I spotted a few photos on the wall and gave them a look-see. Didn’t spot anyone who might have been her father, or boyfriend; in one shot she stood on some kind of bridge with a dead-pale woman who looked her age. In another, Eulie didn’t look older than ten or eleven – it was definitely her, the eyes gave her away. There was a different woman in that shot, one who looked maybe twenty or thirty years older. I turned away from them when Eulie reappeared; she’d put on a long white robe that closed in the front although it didn’t have buttons or zippers.
    »Your mother?« I asked, pointing at the photo. She nodded. »Is she –«
    Eulie looked at the picture as if trying to remember who either of them might have been. »No. She sold herself.«
    »Come again?«
    »She sold herself,« Eulie repeated. »For parts. Expenditure necessary if I was to college.«
    »Parts?«
    »Transplants. Back door’s this way. Come, Walter.«
    I nodded, and followed. The more questions I asked, the less I wanted to hear the answers. All I wanted for the moment was to stop long enough to let it all sink in. I’d forgotten any fears I’d had of what the Kennedys would do to me, or Bennett, or any of the other fools I’d been so preoccupied with, not two days earlier; and there was no need to worry about needing to get to Hawaii; I didn’t think I could get any farther away from where I’d been than where I was now. Eulie unbolted three or four locks on the back door and we stepped outside into the dark. A cool breeze blew; helicopters flew over, shining searchlights down on the ground. I heard people shouting, on the next street over. A high board fence surrounded her tiny yard – her lot couldn’t have been more than twenty feet wide, and not quite thirty feet long. The black silhouettes of surrounding houses poked up on all sides. I looked up; the stars I was able to make out looked to be in roughly the same place as the ones I was used to – not that I’d really seen any for a while, New York not being the optimum place to get into astronomy. The moon was there, and full. I saw the Gibson girl outlined in its surface facing left; just the way